Not far off Oz: Collingwood

May 15, 2010 |

Gros Islet (St. Lucia)

Tags:

t20 world cup

Australia may have been the team to beat at the World Twenty20 but England captain Paul Collingwood is confident his side can stay with them should their old rivals reach the final.

England swept into Sunday’s tournament finale at the Kensington Oval in Barbados with a dominating seven-wicket win over Sri Lanka, last year’s losing finalists, at the Beausejour Stadium here on Thursday.
They now await the winners of Friday’s second semi-final, between Australia and defending champions Pakistan. Australia, with pace bowlers Dirk Nannes, Shaun Tait and Mitchell Johnson leading the way and with a deep batting line-up, are unbeaten at the tournament so far.
The Kensington pitch, quicker in pace than the one at Beausejour, should suit Australia’s fast men. But the England seamers, who reduced Sri Lanka to 26/3 inside five overs, will relish the extra bounce too.
Asked if England were playing a similar brand of cricket to Australia, Collingwood replied: “We are not far off, they are a very powerful side themselves and obviously have a lot of pace in their attack.
“It’s going to be a proper head to head that one on Sunday — if we were to play Australia. I think everybody on the outside would want to see an England-Australia game but you’ve got to be careful.
“Pakistan are still a very dangerous side, you’ve got to show them a lot of respect. They are the world champions so no matter who we come up against we are going to have to continue to play the way we have played and hopefully that will be good enough.
“We are just happy to be in the final but we haven’t won anything yet and I am going to keep drilling that into the guys.”
Turning to the Kensington pitch, Collingwood added: “We probably put in our best performance of the tournament in against South Africa in Barbados (a 39-run win) and we played four games there, two warm-up games and two in the competition.
“I think the batters do like the ball coming on and obviously the bowlers do like the pace coming through but again we are going to have to look at who we play against.”
— AFP

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/13281" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-706cd5a50f1e70162b9fe4db42801ac0" value="form-706cd5a50f1e70162b9fe4db42801ac0" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80429823" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>